The Middle Ground

Zoe Whittall

Description

Missy Turner thinks of herself as the most ordinary woman in the world. She has a lot to be thankful for: a great kid, a loving husband, a job she enjoys and the security of living in the small town where she was born. Then one day everything gets turned upside down. She loses her job, catches her husband making out with the neighbor and is briefly taken hostage by a young man who robs the local café. With her world rapidly falling apart, Missy finds herself questioning the certainties she's lived with her whole life.

Sujets

• Teaching English as a foreign language
• English as a foreign or second language
• EAL
• Electronic Sports League
• Romance
• Suspense
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Orca Book Publishers
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554695089
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE MIDDLE GROUND
THE MIDDLE GROUND

ZOE WHITTALL
Copyright 2010 Zoe Whittall
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Whittall, Zoe The middle ground / written by Zoe Whittall. (Rapid reads)
Electronic Monograph Issued also in print format. ISBN 9781554692897 (pdf) -- ISBN 9781554695089 (epub)
I. Title. II. Series: Rapid reads PS8595.H4975M53 2010 C813 .6 C2009-907249-1
First published in the United States, 2010 Library of Congress Control Number: 2009942223
Summary: Missy Turner s ordinary life is turned upside down when she is taken hostage in a botched robbery at the local caf , and she finds herself questioning the validity of everything she s always believed in.
Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Design by Teresa Bubela Cover photography by Getty Images
In Canada: Orca Book Publishers PO Box 5626, Station B Victoria, BC Canada V8R 6S4
In the United States: Orca Book Publishers PO Box 468 Custer, WA USA 98240-0468
www.orcabook.com
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For my small-town girl
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE
W hen he put the gun to my neck, I closed my eyes. A simple reflex. I imagined the cold metal tip was really just a magic marker, a wet cat s nose, or the small super-ball my son was always losing behind the couch cushions.
What happens when you feel the graze of a gun against your skin? Either you die or your whole life is changed.
I d been doing this thing while drinking black coffee. I would close my eyes so I could pretend it still had cream in it. Apparently, you can lose five pounds in a month just by giving up the half-and-half. I d been trying to psych myself out. Eyes shut, I d imagine it all differently.
It didn t work with the gun either.
It could have been any ordinary day, really. It started out that way. I poured a cup of coffee into my favorite We Can Make a Difference! mug. I spooned a lump of cat food into a dish for Simon. Balancing both cup and dish, I kicked open the screen door. It was one of those beautiful summer days that promised perfect photographs. Idyllic after-work swims in the river.
Siiii-mon! The cat jumped from his oak-tree perch in the backyard. He waddled up, his one eye sparkling up at me.
I rescue stray cats. They come and go. But Simon has always stayed close. Ever since I found him. A tiny orange-and-white kitten hiding under our overturned canoe in the backyard, bleeding from his left eye. That was thirteen years ago. I nursed him back to health, and he never left. Simon knows about loyalty.
Until that day, I thought I did too.
I stood on the chipped brown deck that Dale was always promising to restain and sipped my coffee. My bare feet were dirty and tanned. A white V from my flip-flops stared up at me. Next door, Lydia was sitting in her fold-out chair, having a morning cigarette before waking the kids. Like always.
I remember everything about that morning, though it was like so many others. Maybe that s why I do.
Morning, Missy. She nodded, inhaling.
Gonna be hot today, eh? I d answered back. What I was really thinking was, Our houses are too close together . That and, She must have had her tits done . Nipples don t point skyward like that after three kids are finished pawing at them. Her legs were shiny and perfectly tanned. She uses a fake oily color cream on them that I instinctively distrust. She tried to convince me to use it anyway. I tried it once. For two weeks my legs looked like someone colored on them with orange highlighter.
Still, there wasn t really much pretty about Lydia. Maybe from ten feet away she looked pretty. But up close, her features were awkwardly placed and covered in too much concealer.
We both stared out into our yards. I d hoped she wouldn t want to talk. It was too early. Anyway, she really only liked to talk about herself. And she wasn t that interesting. In high school she was really geeky. She wore thick round glasses and played the trombone. She wasn t all that smart or anything, like some of the other nerdy kids. Then she went away to college. She came back all sex and confidence. Sometimes though, like when she smoked in the mornings, she still looked the picture of grade-nine awkwardness.
Behind our row of postwar bungalows and former farmhouses was what we used to call Conner s field. Now, two rows of identical pink brick duplexes filled the land between our street and the highway overpass. We used to live in a small town. Now the city stretched so far we were almost a suburb. The people in the pink houses took the train to the city to work and shopped at the new superstore on the edge of town.
Main Street, where I worked, was the same old stretch of stores. In many ways we were still a small town. People talked to each other. And everyone knew everyone else s business all the time. Like I knew all about Lydia s husband, who runs Jonny s Gas Bar. He cheated on her with a woman who moved to town and opened a yoga studio in her basement. To get back at him, Lydia slept with the gym teacher from the high school. That was Mr. Ronson, one of the fifty or so Ronsons in town. Now Jonny and Lydia are back to being so in love. Or so Lydia exclaims any chance she gets. They spent a weekend at a couple s retreat in the mountains where they had to concentrate on their essential oneness.
But I don t mind the gossip. Mostly because no one has ever had an excuse to talk about boring old Missy Turner anyway. Maybe in high school they did. When I got pregnant before graduation. But now, I m just like everyone else.
I was never one of those girls prone to dreaming about getting away. Why leave somewhere quiet and comfortable? Where someone you love was always within arm s reach. Until that day, I thought I was pretty happy. My husband was mostly wonderful. Besides occasionally cutting his toenails in my presence, he wasn t half bad to have around.
Dale and I fell in love in the last year of high school. We both worked one of the concession booths at the fall fair. On a sugar high after too many green and pink slushies, we giggled into each other s arms. For our six-month anniversary, he took me to Lollapalooza. Six months used to be such a long time.
After Courtney Love s tearful elegy for her recently deceased husband, I lost my virginity in the parking lot. There s a photo of us standing outside the van afterward. Him wearing the red wool hat with the Beastie Boys patch on it. My hair bleached and puffy with little pink barrettes holding the mess back. I was wearing a plaid dress. Both of us were in combat boots. We look like babies in those photos but thought we were so tough, so old.
Eight months later Michael arrived. Early and so tiny, red and screaming. Despite all the pamphlets claiming my life was over, despite both of our parents urging me to give our son up for adoption, we opted for parenthood. It was probably the first instinctive thing I d done in my life. And it worked out. Sometimes things do. For a while anyway.
When Mike was two, we tried living in the city for a year. Our apartment was one room on the sixteenth floor. I hated how the paint in the bathroom peeled, and the tap trickled constantly. And someone, somewhere, was always screaming. We were cramped. I worked at night in a caf . Dale went to school during the day. We never saw each other. I don t think I ve ever been so lonely, with only the company of a toddler.
When we came home after two semesters, we felt so broken. We came close to breaking up. Our families stepped in and helped out. Dale decided to get a job at the plant where his dad worked. We settled into my great-uncle s house after he went into a nursing home. At the end of our first summer, we no longer felt like we d failed. We decided we d just the made right choice. It sounds corny, or boring, but seriously, I feel lucky.
My parents live two miles away. We get together every Sunday. Our house is paid off. Michael is fifteen and he isn t making online hit-lists or doing meth or impregnating the girl down the block. He s smarter than we were as kids. He likes the outdoors. He plays guitar and watches lots of movies. Very normal. I think maybe he turned out so sweet because I was so young. I could still remember being a kid. I didn t talk to him like he was an idiot just because he was young. I read to him and made sure he knew he could be whoever he wanted to be. But for all my efforts, there was probably a lot of luck involved.
Mike was heading off to camp that day. Leaving home for the first time by himself. A wilderness adventure camp called Out of Bounds. According to the brochure, it was a place where teenagers battle the wilderness and try to survive! It promised to build character and make lifelong friends . Mike had been packing and repacking his oversized backpack for a week. Finally the day had arrived.
For weeks I d been telling everyone how happy I was going to be to have the house to myself. I wasn t going to miss the sound of zombie-killing video games or the persistent stink of gym equipment. But you want to know the truth? I was feeling like a suck. One of those mothers who tear up thinking of her baby out in the world alone. My little wolf cub! I thought. I annoyed myself with those thoughts. Most of the time I